20-Ton Flake Ice Project for Blue Swimming Crab Processing

For a seafood processor, the value of ice is measured by what it protects.

That was the starting point for Koller’s KP200 project in Bahrain. The customer handles freshly caught blue swimming crab and needed a continuous ice supply from the early stages after harvest through transportation, processing and cold storage.

Koller supplied a KP200 industrial flake ice machine with a rated production capacity of 20 tons per 24 hours. The project was designed around one practical requirement: keeping enough cooling capacity available as the crab moved through different parts of the customer’s cold chain.

Following the Crab, Not Just the Machine

The cooling requirement begins before the seafood reaches the processing floor.

After harvest, the blue swimming crab needs to be cooled and transported to the processing facility. Ice remains useful during handling and processing, and the product eventually moves into refrigerated storage.

For this customer, that created a sequence of cooling points rather than one isolated application:

harvest → transport → processing → cold storage

Koller therefore configured the project around continuous flake ice availability across this workflow. The original project requirements included high daily production, rapid cooling, continuous ice supply and ice suitable for both transportation and processing.

The physical form of the ice was relevant here.

Flake ice is thin, dry and loose. Its larger contact area allows it to spread over irregular seafood surfaces more easily than large, rigid pieces of ice. Koller’s flake ice range is designed for applications where rapid and relatively gentle cooling is required, including seafood preservation and food processing.

That characteristic fits crab particularly well. Shells, legs and irregular shapes make even ice coverage more important than it would be for a flat packaged product.

Why the KP200 Was Part of the Cold Chain

The KP200 provides 20 tons of rated flake ice production per 24 hours. According to Koller’s current freshwater flake ice specifications, the KP200 is a water-cooled industrial model.

But this project is not best understood as a “20-ton ice plant.”

The customer is a seafood processor, not an ice retailer. The machine supports the value of the crab rather than producing the company’s final product.

That distinction affects how capacity is viewed.

For an ice seller, unused ice may represent unsold inventory. For a seafood processor, insufficient ice during a heavy receiving period can affect how much incoming product can be cooled and handled effectively.

This is why Koller considered continuous production and stable refrigeration performance as part of the project requirements.

The project also required the equipment to work as part of an operating seafood facility. During installation and commissioning, Koller supported equipment setup, system connection checks, refrigeration testing and trial operation. After commissioning, the KP200 entered daily seafood cooling service.

What This Bahrain Project Shows

The most useful lesson from this project is not that every crab processor needs 20 tons of ice.

It is that ice capacity should follow the seafood through the real process.

A processor considering a similar installation needs to understand how much seafood arrives during peak periods, where ice is added, how long the catch remains in transport, how much ice is consumed during processing and when refrigerated storage takes over.

Those operating conditions determine the required ice supply far more accurately than choosing a machine from a catalogue based only on factory size.

For this Bahrain customer, the final solution was a Koller KP200 industrial flake ice machine capable of supporting several cooling stages with one continuous source of flake ice. The system now supports crab preservation, seafood processing and storage operations.

That is the role of the equipment in this project: not simply making 20 tons of ice, but supporting the cold chain around a commercially valuable seafood product.